Australia's volunteer brigades eye return of devastating fires
Years after unprecedented fires ripped through large swathes of Australia's east, volunteer brigades on the frontlines are bracing for a return to catastrophic conditions. In Picton, South of Sydney, New South Wales Rural Fire Service senior deputy captain Andy Hain says he worries that two years of wetter-than-average conditions will mean plenty of fuel for wildfires, and whether people are prepared for the return of bushfires. In Wisemans Ferry, a river town north of Sydney, volunteers who battled the horrific blazes of the "Black Summer" in 2019-2020 before facing down several damaging floods are readying for a return of fire to the dense bushland around their homes. Former Fire and Rescue NSW Commissioner Greg Mullins says half a century of battling fires made it clear that climate change drives worsening disasters. Mullins, a founder of Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, says volunteers are increasingly being challenged by intensifying fires and floods around the world.
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00:00 Australia's firefighters are racing to burn off thick scrub and leaf litter before it
00:06 becomes fuel for dangerous wildfires in the season ahead.
00:09 After years of wetter than average conditions, the country is bracing for what many predict
00:13 will be the worst season since the devastating fires of 2019-2020.
00:17 We'll go back to having fires that we've had plenty of times before, but how prepared are
00:21 people and are they aware of what's coming?
00:24 And that's the part that you worry about.
00:26 We've got places that are lush with fuel, we're five years ahead of what you'd expect.
00:32 So all of this now has been removed, it's burned most of it out.
00:37 With one of the largest volunteer firefighting services in the world, Australia's frontline
00:42 defenders give up weekends and juggle work to save lives and protect homes from disaster.
00:47 I think the world could learn a lot from how we do things, but the other side of that is
00:52 that when you get these massive long fire seasons, you're asking people to leave their
00:58 work for months.
00:59 I've spoken to people who have been really, really distressed about having to make a decision
01:06 that they just couldn't do it anymore.
01:08 Three years after deadly fires killed 33 people and millions of animals, Mullins, who has
01:13 been battling fires for half a century, says the increasing intensity and frequency of
01:17 disasters challenges how we battle blazes internationally.
01:21 And it's going to be a feature of climate change worldwide is overlapping disaster seasons.
01:27 We've had hundreds of firefighters assisting in Canada.
01:30 We're going to need them here.
01:31 We'll probably be calling on the Northern Hemisphere this year, if not this year, next
01:36 year or the year after.
01:38 Surrounded by a dense national park, the firefighters at Wiseman's Ferry, north of Sydney, are readying
01:43 for a busy season.
01:44 As they eye the threat of bushfires, the town is still recovering from the devastating floods
01:49 which hit months after the flames subsided.
01:52 There was nothing to be saved.
01:53 When the water came through and the way it came up, there was nothing you could do.
01:58 There was no way of stopping it.
02:01 Even after months of battling blazes before watching his home go under, Brennan continued
02:05 to rescue those stranded by the bloated river.
02:08 For his colleague, Kim Brownlee, witnessing a disaster surge through her community pushed
02:13 her to keep going.
02:14 I got to see the devastation of those homes that are literally my neighbours' homes.
02:19 They are just across the road from me, which meant that it kind of pushed us to go, once
02:25 this water is down, we're going to clean up.
02:28 I remember going to Wiseman's Ferry to fight fires and then a couple of months later I
02:32 was hosing mud out of people's homes and then back again.
02:35 They were hit three times.
02:37 And I just don't know how communities can bounce back when they're just hit over and
02:43 over and over again.
02:45 And this is what climate change does.
02:47 It intensifies extreme weather.
02:50 After a summer of several destructive fires around the world, the thought of catastrophic
02:55 wildfires returning to Australia is daunting for those on the ground.
02:59 It's terrifying, but if you had 2019, 2020 become the norm, I don't know how you sustain
03:06 that year on year.
03:07 I don't think that's sustainable.
03:09 We would have to be doing significant personnel and resource sharing between countries because
03:14 you cannot have enough of a response on standby all the time to turn out to something like
03:20 that.
03:22 We're reaching our limits of adaptation when the worst natural disasters hit us.
03:28 And I think that's a whole rethink about preparing before evacuation centres, moving homes out
03:35 of harm's way, not relying on a fire truck or a flood boat turning up at every home because
03:40 it's just not practical.
03:41 [fire crackling]
03:45 (film reel rolling)